The Need for Proactive Education Policy

A beautiful home deserves a beautiful scent in every room. From the open living room to the cozy guest bath, Pura makes whole home scenting effortless. Control intensity and swap fragrances with a tap on the Pura app Ready to transform your space, discover smart homeome fragrance at pura. com slash whole home This episode is brought to you by Bill, the intelligent finance platform that helps businesses and accounting firms scale with proven results Here at Whatnex TVD, we know business. and in businesses across America, smart people are stuck doing the grunt work. You know the drill. Those hours when you could be brainstorming big ideas, you're instead filling in spreadsheets, filling out invoices, or hunting down somebody else's signature Bill wants to change that. With AI powered automation, Bill removes the busywork from your accounts payables workflow. They handle capturing invoices, routing approvals, and syncing with your accounting software so that your team can focus on growth instead of paperwork The bill is so reliable, ninety eight of the top one hundred accounting firms in the US trust it to simplify and secure their bill payment processes. Bill's handled over a trillion dollars in secure payments and is ranked number one overall on G two's twenty twenty five list of Best acccounting and fininance products So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Go with a company whose financial infrastructure is trusted by nearly half a million customers ready to talk with an expert, visit bill dot com slash proven and get a one hundred and fifty dollars gift card as a thank you That's bill dot com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply, see offer page for details The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence There is this video super cut that I love. AI is rewriting production as we sit here I know it deal with it Like I said, it's a tool You may have seen it by now. It's over Jaunty music and it's from our buddies over at four hundred four Media people Booing a series of college graduation speakers when they talk about AI The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution Oh And when I sat down with Randy Weingarten, I wanted to ask her about it Randy is the president of the American Federation of Teachers. And she is thinking a lot about AI right now generation that's graduating from college right now? is really rattled Now look Randy represents her union. She knows that AI could be a threat to her teachers' jobs She's not wrong that no one Especially people entering the workforce right now knows exactly what to do about it I think what you're seeing. is a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear supposed against Very laisy fare. attitude by this administration about AI, basically saying billionaires and let big tech do whatever it wants to do, regardless of what happens the climate regardless of what happens with You know,, job displacement And I think that there's a huge unease about that And that's why you're hearing the boots Randy and her union have put out a ten point plan about AI Some of the highlights, no screens at all through second grade, no student facing AI in elementary school. No AI chatbots until at least sixteen and a tech tax to make big tech contribute to education funding The whole thing reads like a bit of a reckoning. Because for the past two decades or more, technology has crept into education. Chrome books in class to Google based grading Today on the show Do American schools need a tech detox? I'm Lizzie O'Leary, and you're listen to W WhatExt TVD, a show about technology, power, and how the future will be determined Stick around Starting your own business is never easy. Starting your own podcast, that seems easy, but actually there are a ton of landmines to step on along the way. findinding producers, selling ads, and connecting to Wiifi Oh, does that sound straightforward? It's not. I'm talking about sitting in coffee houses for hours after buying one scone. I'm talking about sitting in hotel lobbies and pretending your backpack is luggage. It's torture. I spent so much time making my home office look professional but my connection didn't get the memo. The last thing you want during a major interview is for your guest's voice to turn into a stutter When your bandwidth can't keep up with your ambition, your home office starts feeling like an amateur operation pretty fast. And for a podcast, the internet is key because the internet is how we talk to almost everyone. And no matter the guest, a laggy connection can ruin an exclusive interview Great connectivity isn't a bonus, it's the whole game. An AT andT business is here to help. They've got the tools, team, and expertise you need for a stable network you can rely on And when you can rely on the network, you can get back to thinking about the more important stuff, like nabbing that great guest and getting back to work AT andT Business built to work. get AT andT business at business. att. com This episode is brought to you by Bill, the intelligent finance platform that helps businesses and accounting firms scale with proven results Here at Whatnex TVD, we know business. and in businesses across America, smart people are stuck doing the grunt work You know the drill. Those hours when you could be brainstorming big ideas, you're instead filling in spreadsheets, filling out invoices, or hunting down somebody else's signature Bill wants to change that. With AI powered automation, Bill removes the busywork from your accounts payables workflow. They handle capturing invoices, routing approvals, and syncing with your accounting software so that your team can focus on growth instead of paperwork. Bill is so reliable, ninety eight of the top one hundred accounting firms in the US trust it to simplify and secure their bill payment processes Bill's handled over a trillion dollars in secure payments and is ranked number one overall on G two's twenty twenty five list of bestest accounting and fininance products So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Go with a company whose financial infrastructure is trusted by nearly half a million customers ready to talk with an expert, visit bill dot com slash proven and get a one hundred and fifty dollars gift card as a thank you. That's bill dot com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply, seeee offer page for details Have you ever noticed that when you Google something, suddenly every ad you see is about it, or you try to watch something while you're traveling, and then it is blocked The internet is not as open as we think whichich is why I've started using Proton VPN If you get hit with a this content isn't available in your region, You can get around that with ProtonVPN. It is easy to change your virtual location so you can access the sites and content you need no matter where you are. ProtonVPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the internet like it should work O secure and on your terms. Unlike a lot of VPNs, Proton is backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise creating a safer, faster, and more open internet for everyone. They have a strict no logs policy that's independently verified. It's open source so anyone can inspect how it works, and it's backed by a foundation focused on protecting user rights Not selling your data behind the scenes. It all works seamlessly, so you can be confident you're getting an extensive server network, high speed connections, integrated ad wockkers, and compatibility services without restrictions in over one hundred forty five countries. So whether you want to watch content from anywhere, get around blocked sites, or just keep your activity private on public Wiifi, ProtonVPN has you covered It's easy to get started. Right now, ProtonVPN is offering our listeners seventy percent off a two year plan when you go to protonvPN dot com slash TvD. That's P t nvpN dot com slash tVD for seventy percent off your two year plan. That's protonvPN dot com slash tvD Can you run me through your plan? Give me the highlights Sure Call it devices down Eyes up hands on because We've learned kids, particularly younger kids because of screens becauseuse of AI have really had reduced attention, reduced cognition uce persistence. These are all really important skills that kids need to have and know to be okay in the twenty first century. what we're trying to do is say Let's Put screens down for a bit kindergarten through grade unless there's a compelling reason. with the AI in early elementary school and elementary school And let's instead really focus not only on the foundational skills. Reading is fundamental, basic numeracy is fundamental Let's really use active learning So we are helping kids practice how to think, struggle with thinking, applying knowledge as well as connecting with each other. And we have learned from What we do in career tech ed, what we do in active civics, debates, things like that This kind of learning really works kids have the skills and knowledge they need for the twenty first century and Futurists are telling us skills like Curiosity persistence and thinking will really help equip our kids in a world of AI Tell me what you're hearing from your members right now because there are what? Some thirteen, fourteen thousand public school districts across the country What teeachers doing with AI? what are they being told to do? What are they not being told to do? It feels a little bit like a free for all right now. Number one, it is a free for all. And in fact, there's a recent galluop poll that they did with the Walton Foundation that said a whole bunch of teachers, just like a whole bunch of people in public are using AI, but Two thirds of teachers get almost no guidance and a third of teachers get no guidance And I think what's happened is This is why you actually need a federal government to give you some policy. some sense of guidance about how you seize the future and the fact that this Department of Education federally basically wants to sell itself off for parts and feels like they have no role in education You have a lot of people basically kind of just looking at each other and saying, well what should we be doing? for the last twenty years they were doing was increasing the amount of tech in schools. Yeah. that now has gotten infused with AI. So by the fact of it's not just COVID that you see Basically district after district after district. kind of thinking Well AI should have a role in schools because AI is going to have a role in society without actually thinking about is the effect of things like cognitive offloading? What is the effect on attention? What is the effect on this So all I'm saying in a very non fifteen second way of saying it is that There's no guidance. There's no sense what schooling should look like to prepare kids, prepare families for this future of AI. And there is a very Sinking fear. lots of people have about What is AI doing to society? What is AI doing to the climate? What is AI doing to our brains? So normally schoolools would be, you know who mitigates all this harm and who tries to navigate it for society, but with the sense of how do you do that when you have a federal education department that wants to kind of make itself obsolete Exactly. so that's why the federal, you know, the federal Department of Education doesn't run any schools, but normally it's the federal government with these huge big seismic changes in society that helps create a sense of guidance And that's the I think that's the confusion, that's the chaos That's what everybody is seeing because everybody's now looking for, okay, Who's gonna to do it Who's gonna to say something? And I would just say that all the cultural wars of the last five years have made people really, really gun shy So you know, because people are just afraid that if they chart out a future on something, somebody's going to come to a school board meeting and scream And so I think that what you're seeing in school just and this is what I hear from parents and teachers, they're like, oh my god, what am I supposed to do? Right? And I hear fear from parents and I hear from teachers, o my Godd, what am I supposed to do? So we actually last year know, and it was somewhat controversial because we did it with Microsoft and openpen AI and Anthropic. We just basically said Teachers have to learn this whether they use it or not They have to learn the tool and I don't have a fairy godmother that's giving me ten to twenty million dollars to educate teachers. I'm going to take the money from where I can take it But with the caveat that they're not going to control it And those folks, those tech companies are not controlling it, but even that creat a controversy Well, yeah, so I want to talk about that actually. So you're talking about this agreement that the AFT made last year with Microsoft, Opening Eye Anthropic They provide I believe it's twenty three million dollars for funding for this AI training for five years. hub for teachers, I for five years That seems kind of different from what you're talking about today, which is The worries about cognitive decline, cognitive offloading, what kids are doing help me understand the difference. Like why would you guys take money from those big companies and then come back and say, AI you know, needs to have better guardrails because we said from the time we took that money, AI needs better guardrails You have to find a way for Teachers be in the driver's seat actually learn tool is and how to use the tool and have that kind of agency. all too often, and maybe this is because of my experience For all these years when things are done to teachers, like here's the new great curriculum that if you use it, everything will be peaches and roses know from here on in and how many teachers used to tease. Okay, here's the great new curriculum that we get in August and by October, it's gone. So does that mean this stuff belongs in a bargaining agreement? likeike should Well, it should be in a bargaining agreement. And there are places like you know we have collective bargaining services all the time for teachers and for our other members. We are actually now the fastest growing union in the United States of America. So we do a lot of this teaching and learning for people and last summer We had a whole few days on how do you bargain about AI and in classrooms and in hospitals? So yes, I think that it's a term and condition of employment, but separate and apart from that, what I'm saying is There's this new tool It is affecting people's lives F start Somebody has to give some guidance and some education. about what it is How to use it How to protect people from the harms. and not just by the spin even of the people that we have partnered with about how is the greatest new invention you know, in the world. So what are you hearing from people who have reacted to this plan to from districts, from chancellors, What do they say So the Chancellor in New York has you know called me almost immediately to sit down and we're sitting down next week There's a bunch of other people who have talk to us about it and we're sitting down with them as well. But that's less important to me than what I've heard from parents and classroom teachers around the country teachers heard than God, somebody has a plan. And and even if the plan is not perfect, we need to have a plan How Kids learn How to help kids connect What is it that kids need to know and be able to do in the twenty first century and How do we actually have an educational plan for that? And what do we need to get there the ohhit moment for me, Lizzy was when I heard Jonathan hate last August in a book club, we were having a book club about the anxious generation. You know, what a teachery thing to do And he had just finished the new research that showed that AI and screens. Screens in particular, his research was about screens, that screens were really creating cognitive decline and really creating reduction in attention So If that's happening with the youngest kids How when their brains are the most supple How are we gonna to help them exercise? the bustle of learning. I guess one of the things that I'm curious about. So Chat GBT, right rolled out in November of twenty twenty two. There's tons of reporting. four hundred four media has done great reporting pulling all these public records of AI use in the classroom. One from the Louisiana Department of Education. You know, they've got this whole PowerPoint makes me wonder a little bit. We do too commommon sense guardrails from the day from a few days after Chap GPT came up. Okay, but it's oldld. It's we're talking in June of twenty twenty six Why did it take you guys so long Well, first off been doing these guardrails. for a bunch of years And secondly, I think it I think what's happened is really took us to understanding Research on attention That was the Y shit moment the bak Were all those take home Chromebooks a mistake This episode is brought to you by Bill, the intelligent finance platform that helps businesses and accounting firms scale with proven results Here at Whatnex TVD, we know business. and in businesses across America, smart people are stuck doing the grunt work. You know the drill. Th hours when you could be brainstorming big ideas, you're instead filling in spreadsheets, filling out invoices, or hunting down somebody else's signature Bill wants to change that. With AI powered automation, Bill removes the busywork from your accounts payables workflow. They handle capturing invoices, routing approvals, and syncing with your accounting software so that your team can focus on growth instead of paperwork Bill is so reliable, ninety eight of the top one hundred accounting firms in the US trust it to simplify and secure their bill payment processes. Bill's handled over a trillion dollars in secure payments and is ranked number one overall on G two's twenty twenty five list of Best acccounting and fininance products So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Go with a company whose financial infrastructure is trusted by nearly half a million customers ready to talk with an expert, visit bill d. com slash proven and get a one hundred and fifty dollars gift card as a thank you. That's bill dot com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply, see offer page for details. Beautiful home deserves a beautiful scent in every room From the open living room to the cozy guest bath, Pura makes whole home scenting effortless. Control intensity and swap fragrances with a tap on the Pura app Ready to transform your space, discover smart homeome fragrance at pura. com slash pole home. So let's talk about, I think EdTech more generally, because I think a lot of this is bundled up in this conversation about and kind of the creep of tech that came along with the pandemic Understandably, there was a lot of online learning At the same time, you now have parents in different districts saying like, I don't want my kid to have a school issue chromebook or they're watching YouTube on their Chromebook Are there Ed tech things that you wish you could take back, that you wish you could undo. Yes. What are they? Well, let me put it this way. I wish we could undo the pandemic. Well, I think a lot of people do. I also, I wish that we knew what we knew at the end of the pandemic at the beginning of the pandemic. I wish we knew that if you had really good ventilation and you had good testing. schoolools would have been able to be reopened far in advance. I mean, we were the union that actually said a month into the pandemic, we put a plan out saying schools should be reopened, but they have to be reopened safely. So I think that the amount of text has u particularly in elementary schools I wish we could have slowed that down But that didn't just start with the pandemic. There was ten years beforehand Ls of, you know, Ed teech was supposed to be the magic bullet. It was supposed to be ing kids with engagement and how much time and effort was spent putting in a whiteboard to every classroom instead of a blackboard. And You know, is tech better a is a whiteboard and what you can do on a whiteboard better than the old Xerox and the old, you know, film clips. I'm sure it is It It is the balance that I think we got wrong I think though there is a really difficult thing that we are asking kids and families, not to mention teachers to do. So I'm going to use again, our home state, home city, though different districts. As an example When you are in New York, Once you hit third grade, you're taking online assessments. So it feels like there is a bit of a mismatch here where You were saying kids need to be away from screens Also, there's a system set up where they have to be assessed on a computer. That feels like a very difficult thing for families to handle Well, maybe they shouldn't be assessed on a computer. The point here is Mbe we should start thinking about again Question What do kids need to know and be able to do in the twenty first century? And backmap that question from there Maybe it shouldn't just simply be me, this cllassroom teacher from Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York who had happened to by the grace of God be the president of the UFT and now the president of the AFT who says, stop Let's think about what's going on based upon the research.